So I decided to order the Philips Bodygroom for some "manscaping ![[WikiPedia]](http://www.mikeyp.com/css/external.gif)
," or at least attempt to look and feel more human and less beast.
When I clicked the Buy Now with 1-Click button on Amazon, as usual, they showed a page of "Other items I might enjoy:" In the list:
Aw geez…
Although retail stores are poor places to evaluate audio systems, I listened to the iPod Hi-Fi at an Apple store the other day. To me, it sounded like a decent pair of bookshelf speakers… …taped together and layed perfectly flat on the bottom of an empty bathtub. Yeah, it probably sounds better in a home bedroom (even audiophile geek Jim Machrone thinks it doesn't sound too bad), so I figured I'd reserve judgement until I read the review in the magazine Sound & Vision.
S&V is the direct descendant of Stereo Review, which objectively reviewed audio equipment with precise scientific measurement, and without all of the foofoo "golden eared" writers you see in other HiFi publications. S&V expanded that tradition to reviews of HDTVs, DVD players, and other consumer electronics. They still have two of the best audio columnists around with David Ranada and Ken Pohlman.
So I was extremely disappointed in their review of the iPod Hi-Fi. Not with their opinion of the unit, but with the review itself. Missing were all of the objective audio measurements I expected from S&V, like frequency response, dynamic range, imaging, THD, etc. Nothing but pure objective opinion like you'd find in lesser publications. How ironic that in the same issue, David Ranada writes a wonderful column explaining that we should not believe the hype of BluRay versus HD-DVD until there are objective, scientifically measured performance tests of identical material on both platforms.
I can't understand why S&V would blow it on a review of such a well-known sound system. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. But maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt. In the review, Al Griffin calls the iPod Hi-Fi, "one helluva boombox." That might just say everything I need to know…
Ever since I've had an internet connection with web access, I've read CNN.com each morning. Sadly, CNN's concept of journalism has gone downhill steadily over the past few years ... their concept of "news" now looks a lot more like Entertainment Tonight. Today is the last day I'll read CNN. With today's interesting news items such as the conviction of Enron executives, an Israeli border referendum, and Mastercard's IPO, CNN has chosen four of its top news links to be about the TV show American Idol. Wha?
For comparison, the BBC World News site has zero Idol links on their front page.
Goodbye CNN. Hello BBC.
(For the record, I've never watched a single episode of American Idol.)
This evening I went to the excellent USGS Earthquake tracking web site to find out if the rocking "thud" our house made tonight was a quake. Although the site lists earthquake info instantly on low-res maps, their precise location maps have always been old pastel-colored topo maps only a geologist could love.
But when I clicked on the link for tonight's quake (a minor 3.2 just a few miles away), I saw a link to Google Maps. And sure enough, the link showed a beautiful satellite view of the exact location of the earthquake. Nice! Odd how easy it is to notice the fault lines in satellite pictures when you are looking for them. And unsettling.
After about 5 years of no noticeable earthquakes, we've felt 5 or 6 minor quakes in the past year, all within about 15 miles of the house. Hmmm…
If you are a fan of The Godfather film , book , or game [godfather, godfatherwiivideo, godfather360, godfatherlegacy], you'll enjoy The Godfather Legacy by Harlen Lebo . Lebo's book is a fascinating account of the making of the classic films. The writing style is captivating and easy to read without any trace of the Hollywood gossip-style "journalism" so common today.
Anyone who has tried creating a film or a video game will recognize many of the trials, troubles, and ultimate successes experienced by Francis Coppola and producer Al Ruddy.
Some interesting things I learned from the book:
My favorite blogger is at it again on HD Beat. Fresh after his brilliant "review" recommendation of the junky Helios DVD player, he seems to have misunderstood concept of stress relief cables.
Stress relief on a cable is designed to prevent bending or breaking of the cable at the connector point, or prevent electrical stress on the connection of the wire to the connector. Really thick cables can weigh down on a connection and either break the host connector or even cause equipment to tip over. At the very least, they won't bend easily, causing them to take up a lot of space behind the equipment. A short, flexible stress relief cable can solve many of those issues.
The blogger on HD Beat has decided that some new HDMI stress relief cables are designed to "take the 'stress' out of installing different types of cables in tight spots." Cute!
The slick A9 search engine from Amazon.com has switched from being based on Google and is now based on Microsoft's Windows Live search. Microsoft's search is pretty good, and quickly getting better, but I miss A9's nice automatic inclusion of images from Google Image Search.
A9 does, however, have less useful but interesting additional image search columns, including Flickr, and the… "Specimen Image Database", describe by A9 as follows:
Search for images of a specific taxonomic species. This is currently restricted to images of lice.
Added!
Getting the sense that you are completely overwhelmed with data, from emails, newsfeeds, DVR, etc.? This dude totally nails it:
…these days, my feed reader pulls down megabytes of data – a large portion of it, of course, cat pictures…
Found on furrygoat
My WinXP machine suddenly starting displaying random patterns of video garbage Saturday, which I figured was the sure sign of a crapped out video card. Weird, since I haven't had a video card go bad since the Vesa Local Bus days. The computer must have known I was passing by Fry's that day.
Rather than buy a new card, I grabbed an extra one out of the closet (don't ask). The card that fried was an NVidia 5700 Ultra, and I replaced it with an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro. In benchmarks, the Radeon is more powerful than the 5700, but check out how much heatsink is required to passively (and silently) cool these things:
The NVidia is on the left and the Radeon is on the right. The GPU on the Radeon is physically about a quarter the size of the NVidia GPU and doesn't require an extra power connector. My motherboard temperature dropped nearly 3 degrees since I installed that card. (Yep, that's a Zalman heat pipe system on the NVidia card.)
For some reason, I can't see the machine POST when the card is connected to my Apple Cinema 20" monitor. That kinda sucks, so I'll need to figure out what's going on with that.
